Appaholic: Top 5 kosher eating apps

The small world of Kosher eating is expanding in both range and palate, one application at a time.

iphones R 311.
(photo credit:REUTERS)

At least insofar as your stomach is concerned, living a “full” life
while keeping kosher by the book is sometimes a bit of a challenge. It’s
particularly daunting to those who are either living without Mom, or
recently began a more observant lifestyle; or both.

The
challenge is multifaceted and a number of important questions spring to
mind: What is a geschniztle fish? Where do I eat pizza and when, and
does it matter how often? Do I also need separate sets of paper plates?
Should I just only eat with paper plates from now on? And who suffers
while you spend your nights pondering some of these important questions?
Your stomach. So give your belly a break and peruse this week’s “Top 5
kosher eating apps,” here to teach you how to cook, clarify kashrut,
help you eat out and stimulate your appetite.

The road most traveled

At
some point, we all have to throw in the towel and learn to cook. Canned
food and frozen pizza just don’t cut it, and who can afford to eat out all
the time? A kosher lifestyle may exaggerate the challenge of any cooking
project, but as a long history of Jewish mothers suggest, it’s not
impossible and it’s well worth the challenge.

Our favorite Jewish Cooking app is Kosher Cookbook,
which includes Jewish classics, creative spins on Jewish classics and a
host of recipes that appeal to any modern pallet. This app is
especially great for planning multi-course meals, with the lovely “add
to shopping list” function, where true to its word the app compiles
shopping lists of all your recipes to cut down a few planning steps.

Cost: $1.99Supported formats: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad

Kosher vacations

Israel
is the land of milk, honey and kosher eating. Better than that, Israel
is the mecca of kosher vacations. And while your kosher vacation must of
course include the classics like a trip to the Kotel, scenic hikes and
endless walking tours, make sure to step
off of the straight and narrow and plan your ultimate kosher wine-tour.

The Kosher Wine Society
app will help any wine enthusiast with their ultimate vacation. The
application includes both an explanation on what it means for a wine to
be kosher, a kosher wine quiz, as well as a directory of vineyards in
California and Israel. Road tripping with your iPhone? The application
connects you right to your iPhone maps function for GPS directions.

Cost: FreeSupported formats: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad

Hit the streets

There
are those occasions where you just can’t be bothered, or you’re on the
road, and since we’ve made this all about your appetite we may as well
address the proverbial driver of your whims; your stomach. You guessed
it, there’s an app for that.

Let your iPhone and your stomach form a harmonious union and check out Rusty Brick’s Kosher,
a handy app that uses your GPS location to find all of the kosher
restaurants around you. Sorted by meat and dairy, each restaurant
profile comes replete with reviews, a cuisine and price profile, and
more.

While this application is still in its infancy, we predict
it’ll do nothing but improve, as the only thing lacking are more users
to leave reviews and enrich the profiles—which are contributed to by
users.

Cost: $4.99Supported formats: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad

Look it up

Did you know that according to kashrut
laws, green asparagus requires a thorough check for insects prior to
eating while white asparagus may be eaten without any “further
checking?”

Perhaps this is the kind of information you’ve been
looking for, perhaps you consider this too much information—regardless,
for the cost (free), we feel confident that cRc Kosher will be of some use.

The
application includes a thorough and well-organized database of both
non-processed foods and brand-name drinks. Traveling around the world?
Don’t leave cRc Kosher at home: They’ve even included a searchable,
global list of approved kosher-certification agencies around the world.

Cost: FreeSupported formats: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad

Neither hunger nor food comas preclude prayer

Imagine
these two scenarios: In the first, you are starving; in the second,
you’ve eaten, your pants are bursting, and a gigantic mess is waiting
for you in the kitchen. Regardless, in either situation, there are
blessings that need to be said, and pronto.

The app iBless Food
will do exactly that. Replete with a searchable food-database, you can
look up the food you ate or are intending to eat, and find the blessing.
For those who are less well versed with the blessings, you can both
hear the blessings and read them in either the original Hebrew or the
transliteration.

Cost: $4.99Supported formats: iPhone, iPod touch, iPad

Appaholic is a bi-weekly column which
thematically reviews mobile apps with a Jewish or Israeli twist. If you
have an app to suggest, send details to appaholic.jpost@gmail.com.